printing sketch up files

hello everyone my name is ash.

im new to the world of 3d printing but when i come across it on the web i had to have a 3d printer, i purchased a reprap V2 Linear Prusa Kit online and im having alot of success with it, im pretty happy with its quality so far.

im im having trouble with blobs on the z axis of prints, i think this is due to retraction speed when moving up a layer or after a retraction at all. but this isnt a major.

i have how ever only test printed things found on thingiverse, but tonight i tried to make my own items to print, i downloaded google sketch up, and made myself a simple cube 20mmx20mmx20mm exported it as a .dae file, opened it in meshlab and saved it as an stl file. But what i found is when i use the measure tool its way out of scale, like only 1.5mmx1.5mmx1.5mm

so i opened my file up in netfabb and was able to rescale it, but the scale system isnt a great way to resize accuratly.

is there an easier way to make a file and change it to an stl?
what programs do you recommend? keep in mind im completly new to all of this 3d stuff =)

Try this:
[www.guitar-list.com]

Usually if you design and export .DAE from Sketchup and convert with Meshlab then you need to scale by 25.4 in Netfabb and it will be 100% accurate and to-scale.

Or use the plugin above.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

thanks for the reply's i'll give the scaling up by 25.4 method a try first as this will be easier then learning yet another program =)

thanks again.

ash.

there are some plugins that will export to stl, i just cant remember the name off the top of my head, but its free.

I tried the plugin Andrew smith recommend and so far it's working great, thanks guys